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Houston battles massive floods as Harvey dumps rain on Texas
By Brendan SMIALOWSKI, and Antoni Belchi
Houston (AFP) Aug 27, 2017


Superstorm Harvey drowns Texas town in dirty torrent
Victoria, United States (AFP) Aug 27, 2017 - On a damp sheet of wood, hastily nailed across a ground floor window of a white clapboard house is scrawled a desperate plea: "God help all of us."

Tree branches, broken down vehicles and building debris lay scattered in the streets of Victoria, Texas on Sunday -- and still the rain fell.

Brock Long, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has warned his recovery teams will be at work in Texas "for years" after Hurricane Harvey's passage.

But in Victoria -- a community of 67,000 on a crossroads between Houston, San Antonio and Corpus Christi -- residents are just trying to make it through the coming days.

"We have no water right now," said John Moraida, who has lived in Victoria for 13 years, arriving after the last hurricane blew through in July 2003.

Then, Hurricane Claudette left 90 percent of the city without power, but there has been nothing to compare to Harvey since the devastating Hurricane Carla in 1961.

"I sat in the sunroom here and watched all the destruction happen, all the roofs flying off the houses, the trees falling down over here -- it was really bad," Moraida said.

"The only water we have, we have to go get it or what we're doing is collecting water where it's raining (so) we can flush the commodes and stuff," Moraida said.

Harvey's wind speed slowed as it rolled over the Gulf Coast and swept slowly but inexorably inland -- but the torrential rainfall only worsened.

Meteorologists already calculate that nine trillion gallons of water have fallen on Texas, and another five to ten trillion could fall by Wednesday.

- 'We can't run things' -

Victoria, along with the sprawling Houston area and the oil refineries of Corpus Christi and Galveston, are under the the heaviest storm in US history.

And, so the residents have questions. Are they safe now?

Teresa Reeder had no trouble listing her concerns.

"Of course the water, and the electricity. Of course the water because of the bacteria that is in the water. The electricity because -- if nothing else -- we can't run things," Reeder said.

"As far as being cool, people can get over that. But we need water for our refrigerators, for food, and everybody staying safe."

At highway intersections, cars and even powerful pick-up trucks are inundated and abandoned. Mobile homes were on their sides.

Residential streets remained knee-deep in water in several places, and as the storm passed, families that walked out to survey the damage were stunned and tearful.

Judy Malak, a town resident for 40 years, had made her preparations but -- given the unprecedented scale of the destruction -- is not sure how long supplies will last.

"We don't have electricity -- but the downtown area does -- and we can't find any gasoline. And we're using up the last of our generator gas," she said.

Harvey, subsequent floods 'beyond anything experienced': weather service
Houston (AFP) Aug 27, 2017 - The National Weather Service issued a dire warning Sunday as massive floods inundated Houston in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, saying the severe weather conditions were "beyond anything experienced."

"This event is unprecedented & all impacts are unknown & beyond anything experienced. Follow orders from officials to ensure safety. #Harvey," it said on Twitter.

The monster storm has played havoc with transportation, completely flooding many of the city's most important arteries and forcing the closure of both of Houston's main airports.

At least three deaths have been officially confirmed, and the toll appears certain to rise.

Massive flooding unleashed by deadly monster storm Harvey left Houston -- the fourth-largest city in the United States -- increasingly isolated Sunday as its airports and major highways shut down, and residents scampered onto rooftops to escape raging waters.

The city's two main airports suspended all commercial flights and a major hospital was forced to evacuate patients after flooding in its basement disrupted power. A local television station also was knocked off the air.

Rising waters from Harvey -- which crashed into the Texas Gulf Coast late Friday as a huge Category 4 hurricane -- inundated roads throughout the area, affecting every major freeway in Houston and hamstringing efforts to move people to safety. At least three people have been killed so far.

"It's crazy to see the roads you're driving on every day just completely under water," Houston resident John Travis told AFP.

Another city resident, Brit Dreger, said: "It doesn't look like we're going anywhere for a while."

Overwhelmed emergency services warned residents to head for high ground or climb onto rooftops -- not into attics -- so they could be seen by rescue helicopters.

"It is bad and growing worse," said Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who added that the storm had inflicted billions of dollars in damage.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner dismissed the idea that evacuations should have been ordered sooner.

"You cannot put, in the city of Houston, 2.3 million people on the road. That is dangerous," Turner told reporters.

"You issue an evacuation order and put everybody on the highway -- you really are asking for a major calamity."

- 'Life and safety' -

US President Donald Trump, who was spending the weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat, said he would visit the Lone Star State as soon as he could "without causing disruption."

"The focus must be on life and safety," he said in a series of tweets about the disaster, his first major domestic challenge since taking office in January.

At least three people have died since Harvey made landfall, spawning tornadoes and lashing east and central Texas with torrential rains, but authorities said they could not yet confirm other possible fatalities.

In Houston, a woman drowned when she left a car which had stalled in high water, and another man was found dead in a flooded Wal-Mart parking lot in the Galveston area, officials confirmed.

Local officials said Saturday one person was killed when a house caught fire in the Rockport area, where Harvey made landfall late Friday.

"The breadth and intensity of this rainfall are beyond anything experienced before," the National Weather Service said on Twitter.

Houston opened community centers to shelter people forced out of their homes, but the mayor appealed to residents to stay put and not call the 911 emergency line unless they faced a life-threatening situation.

"Do not get on the road," Turner said.

"Even if there's a lull today, don't assume the storm is over."

- Rain measured in feet -

The National Weather Service said about two feet (60 centimeters) of rain fell in Houston and nearby Galveston in a 24-hour period. Another 20 inches were expected.

Flooding was expected to worsen as Harvey, the most powerful storm to hit the United States mainland since 2005, lingers over the area.

"We are measuring it not in inches but in feet," Abbott told CBS's "Face the Nation" show.

Harvey ripped off roofs, flipped mobile homes and left hundreds of thousands of people in the dark on the Gulf Coast, home to some of the country's most important oil refineries.

Tornado warnings were in effect in several parts of the area.

Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport cancelled all commercial flights because all access roads were inundated. Hobby International, the city's other airport, also stopped flights "due to standing water on runways."

Abbott said National Guard troops were deployed overnight in Houston, using high-clearance vehicles to help with rescues in inundated areas of the city, the largest in Texas, and only behind New York, Los Angeles and Chicago nationwide.

The Coast Guard has so far rescued at least 100 people from the air. Abbott said about 20 rescue helicopters were in use.

Boats also were being deployed, "but they can't get here," Harris County Judge Ed Emmett told reporters, appealing to residents to use their own vessels.

Emmett said another 1,500 rescues had been made so far.

Television images showed residents and their children floating through the inundated streets in kayaks.

Search and rescue operations were also underway in other devastated coastal communities including Rockport, Aransas Pass, Port Aransas and Corpus Christi, a city of some 325,000 people, Abbott said.

In Victoria, a town just north of Rockport, residents were shocked by the storm's intensity.

"If I knew it was going to be what it came to be, I might have left sooner," local resident Robby Villa told AFP.

- 'Landmark' disaster -

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said there should be no illusions about the long-term impact.

"This disaster will be a landmark event," FEMA director Brock Long told CNN, adding it would take at least two years to recover.

Coastal Texas is a fast-growing area, with some 1.5 million people moving into the region since 1999. It is also home to a large number of oil refineries and a number of major ports.

US authorities said about 22 percent of crude production in the Gulf of Mexico, accounting for more than 375,000 barrels a day, was shut down as of Friday.

ExxonMobil said Sunday it had closed its massive Baytown refining complex -- the second-largest in the country.

But Abbott said the oil industry was well prepared.

"They hunkered down and were able to contain the facilities, and they have the ability to ratchet up back up there quickly," he said on Fox News Sunday, predicting a "one- or two-week downturn."

SHAKE AND BLOW
Death toll from South Asia flooding tops 1,000
New Delhi (AFP) Aug 24, 2017
The death toll from floods sweeping South Asia has climbed above 1,000, officials said Thursday, as rescue teams try to reach millions stranded by the region's worst monsoon disaster in recent years. Thousands of soldiers and emergency personnel have been deployed across India, Bangladesh and Nepal, where authorities say a total of 1,013 bodies have been recovered since August 10 when intens ... read more

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